The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) have formed a joint committee to look into ways to safely deploy next generation (5G) telecom towers across India’s 137 airports. <\/p>\n
“We were not able to come to a conclusion following discussions with the airport authorities. Since, there were comprehensions, a committee has been formed. We are asking to allow telecom service providers to roll out low-powered networks,” a senior DoT official told ETTelecom. <\/p>\n
The deployment of fifth generation (5G) networks alongside airports has become a contentious issue between the two government departments who are in a deadlock since last year. <\/p>\n
The interdepartmental panel, set up last week, will submit its findings in 15 days.<\/p>\n
The DoT argued that the C-band identified for 5G technology in India is sufficiently spaced out from the 4200-4400 MHz band, used for radio altimeter, an airborne electronic device that is used by the aviation sector to measure altitude of aircrafts.<\/p>\n
Telecom carriers were directed not to deploy networks within 0.9 kilometres on either side of the runway, and in a 2 kilometre area starting from the both ends of an airstrip. <\/p>\n
Telcos believe that the 5G frequency band (3300-3670 MHz) would not pose any threat to lives, and it would be a revenue loss for them if they asked to blackout next generation services in a large area around the country’s airports. <\/p>\n
“We should come to a conclusion. Human safety is an important aspect and keeping that in mind, a low-powered solution can be considered,” the official said.<\/p>\n
Further, he said that the altimeters currently in use at airports are wideband and may do interference, and added that the department had suggested to use bandpass filter, a solution that allows aircrafts to operate together with the 5G environment.<\/p>\n
The committee is also studying avionics models in multiple countries that have rolled out 5G networks.
\n“It’s (deployment of 5G) all about the spectrum use. I think reducing power is an option. We need to look at it thoroughly. There are no accidents so far,” Mats Granryd, director general, GSM Association (GSMA) said.<\/p>\n
London-based telco group said that it’s a global phenomenon, and India should look at it very closely.<\/p>\n
Last year, Devusinh Chauhan, Minister of State for Communications in the Parliament said that the band identified for 5G technology (3300-3670 MHz), among others, are sufficiently spaced out from the frequency band 4200-4400 MHz, used for radio altimeter, and it is “very unlikely” to cause any interference.<\/p>\n
In December 2022, the DoT asked telecom operators to avoid deploying 5G base stations in the 3.3-3.6 GHz band around airports following the recommendations by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) have formed a joint committee to look into ways to safely deploy next generation (5G) telecom towers across India’s 137 airports. “We were not able to come to a conclusion following discussions with the airport authorities. Since, there were comprehensions, a committee has been formed. We are asking to allow telecom service providers to roll out low-powered networks,” a senior DoT official told ETTelecom. The deployment of fifth generation (5G) networks alongside airports has become a contentious issue between the two government departments who are in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-799934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}